The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said on Monday that RuPay has now introduced the CVV (Card Verification Value) free payment experience for its debit, credit, and prepaid cardholders who have tokenized their cards on the merchant application or webpage.

This enhanced experience is intended to ensure that cardholders do not have to reach for their wallet or recall any card details if they have saved (tokenized) their card on an ecommerce merchant that supports this feature, according to NPCI in a statement.

Tokenization is a simple approach for shops to protect card transactions without revealing explicit or authentic card details.

When a cardholder chooses to save their card for a domestic ecommerce transaction, they authenticate the transaction as a one-time activity followed by entering the OTP (two-factor authentication), it said. The details are then Tokenized and saved with the merchant.

Because genuine card details are not retained with the merchant, this protects the customer's card details from cyber fraud.

Merchants thrive on CVV-less payments; for subsequent transactions, customers can complete the payment by simply entering the OTP, eliminating the need to enter the CVV or other card details.

RuPay, the homegrown card network developed by NPCI, went live on Card on File Tokenization in 2021, in line with RBI's guidelines, for its domestic ecommerce transactions to ensure better security for all its cardholders.

As per the RBI, tokenisation refers to the replacement of actual card details with an alternate code called the "token". A tokenised card transaction is considered safer as the actual card details are not shared with the merchant during the processing of the transaction.

"Our vision has always been to ensure effortless payments for all our RuPay cardholders without compromising on the security aspect. Having worked with the payments industry extensively for the implementation of Card on File Tokenization, which ensures utmost security of sensitive card information, now we are aiming at making the payment experience of a tokenized card seamless," said Denny Thomas, head of RuPay.